Book Review- Sticky Fingers DIY Duct Tape Projects

Sticky Fingers DIY Duct Tape Projects by Sophie Maletsky 
I'm an enthusiastic duct taper, and duct tape was my daughter's first craft material.

This book is written for people who are just getting started in taping. It starts with the absolute basics, how to make a duct tape sheet, how to use a backing material for bigger projects so you can use less tape, how to make strips, weaving and the packing tape clear window.

The first project is a basic pouch. Pouches are a good first project because there is no fold in the middle, and they are the basis for a lot of other projects. She explains how to make the pouch, then a few different methods of closing it. So by the time you are done making all the pouches, you'll have a very good grasp of closing methods for duct tape projects.

The projects include a wallet of course. Every duct tape book should have a wallet in it! But there are also flowers, bangle bracelets, purses, frames and pouches. With the variety of tape designs out there (quick obligatory shout out for my personal favorite Retro Owls!) and the projects in here, there are gift ideas for years. There are also tips for using the empty rolls and tiny scraps so nothing goes to waste.

This book is written for tweens to teens, and has a lot of photographs and very clear instructions. The author has been writing and designing for that age set for a while. Which means if you're an adult who wants to start working with tape crafts, it should be a cinch to follow. This will give you the basic skills, then you can start designing for yourself.

The type at the bottom of the roll on the cover says "easy to pick up, hard to put down" and that's the absolute truth. Duct taping is addictive as a craft. But it's also fairly inexpensive if you save your design tapes for the parts that show and use a backing material or less expensive plain old gray duct tape on the inside of projects. I do recommend this book.
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My own tip for new duct tapers? A lot of the time you don't have to make packing tape windows because there is so much clear plastic packaging on things that are bought on a regular basis. I save that clear plastic, cutting down to sheets where possible, but some stuff looks good with a bubble window full of confetti or small gumball machine toys too. It can add an extra dimension of whimsy and you get to recycle.

Published by Zest books


Amazon.com affiliate links don't affect your cost, and provide extra income to me personally, which helps support this site.

I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Korean Food Bazaar

Around the block from my home is a Korean Catholic Church, and once a year they have a food bazaar as a fund raiser. Authentically cooked food and it's hugely popular. It seems like we've always got something else going on that weekend and miss it though. This year, I made a point of it. All of these photos except for the one of TATG were taken by her, and she's just getting used to a new camera so there are some focus issues.

Walking into the parking lot, the 2 groups cooking over fire were situated outside (it snowed this morning, it's raining now, Alaska weather is weird). One of them was chicken on skewers with peppers. The other was fish bread with sweet filling. She didn't get a photo of the incredibly cool thing they were cooking it in. It was cast iron, and huge. It rest over the fire and could turn to access the wells. The wells are fish shaped, with a lid that closes down. They would scoop in the batter, let it cook a bit, scoop in the sweet bean paste, then a bit more batter, cook until golden brown. TATG wanted to try the skewers, she was a little nervous about the idea of "fish bread" but after watching them make it, got a lot more enthused. William and TATG walked into the church with me eating one each.

Once we got in there, there were tables lined around the basement with hot plates and other cooking surfaces. It was hard choosing! We opted to share everything so we could taste lots. My favorite was a fried chicken in a sweet/spicy sauce. I'm pretty hit and miss with fried foods, so much of it is just too greasy, but this was perfect.

Nom nom nom. Did I mention that usually I avoid spicy too? But this was only lightly spicy and so very, very good.

William's favorite of course was sushi. It was good, mild, crisp and tasting. (photo taken after TG worked out the focus issues)

See that whole plate? I had one, TG had two, next thing we knew, William was eating the last one. He really loves sushi. (Gosh I wish he had shaved this morning- photo slightly out of focus)

TG eating one of the chicken skewers-

The serving sizes were generous, so we wound up very full at this point, but there was still so much more to try? What to do? We decided to get plates to go for dinner tonight, plus Michael was working and this way he can enjoy some of the food too. When we got home, TG decided she needed to eat another one of the fish breads.

The camera is an old one of mine, I offered her a choice of the cameras that her dad and I don't use, and she opted for a point and shoot that's a couple years old and a decent little camera. Since she had the camera and some of her duct tape items, she also took photos of them.

This is taped over a very ugly wallet she bought at a fund raiser for a veteran's non-profit organization her dad and I support. She bought it planning to cover it with tape and did this portal wallet. She's carried it for a couple years.

Her most recent is this purse (not in focus)

Which she lined with my owl tape!

I love the multicultural mix in Anchorage so much, and as much as I do like going to specific restaurants, the events are so much better. Sometimes it's hard to find them. Some of them do use Craigslist or our local newspaper, but mostly we watch for signs in specialty markets or on the many churches around town.

Duck Tape® Prom Queen (Mini Crown Tutorial)

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Duck® Brand for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I remember when my daughter was little and she discovered Duck Tape®. She created clothes for her fashion dolls and stuffed animals, purses, bags and covered notebooks. She's still making purses, accessories and notebooks even though she's (mostly) outgrown fashion dolls.
Duck Tape® has an annual scholarship fashion contest for with great prizes for people who attending their proms. Stuck at Prom® is open to students from U.S.A. and Canada except for Maryland, Vermont, Colorado, Puerto Rico and the Province of Quebec. You need to be at least 14 to enter and going to an school sanctioned prom of some sort. You can find the full rules HERE and an f.a.q. HERE. Check out the gallery of previous winners and entries!
I was talking to a reporter about Duck Tape® after winning the contest, and he was surprised to find out that there were patterns for Duck Tape®. I'm sure he would be really astounded to know just how many. Like Duck Tape® on Facebook (I do!) , right now the cover image is a whole bunch of different designs and colors of tape. The Duck Tape community on there is helpful and supportive.

Here are just a few patterns and colors just to give you some idea what's available.
The metallic  Duck Tape®  that I used for the base is also available in silver.
To make a mini crown you will need:
Duck Tape®
Non stitck scissors- These things are the best thing in the world for Duck Tape® crafting! I like Westcott Titanium Coated Scissors
my pattern for a crown
ball point pen or permanent marker
elastic- cord or narrow elastic
bobby pins
optional- parchment paper (a tip that I got from Cathy who designs applique bags and purses, look for DuckTapeVillage on FB)

The basis for almost all Duck Tape® crafting is making a sheet, and you can find instructions on their site for doing that. You'll start by making a sheet big enough to fit the crown pattern. Click the pattern for a larger version, print and cut out.

After you make the sheet and check it on your crown pattern- outline the pattern with the pen.


Cut out the crown. Tape it closed. You don't actually need the tab, but it does make it a little easier. One of the nice things about Duck Tape® is that seam allowances aren't necessary! You can just butt edges and tape them.
After you cut out and assemble the crown, you can tape over the edges to make sure they are all covered, or use a marker on them or just leave them plain. I taped over them.

Tape a  piece of elastic inside the crown across the diameter at the bottom . This provides a base to clip it into your hair.  You could also do an X in elastic if you want to pin in down in your hair with more security.
Then the fun part, decorate it. There are all sorts of tapes, all sorts of ideas. This is where the parchment paper can come in handy. If you lightly adhere tape to the slick side of parchment paper, you can cut out appliques and motifs from tape to decorate your crowns and other items more easily.
Even if you aren't the official Prom King or Queen, you'll have your very own crown from your prom.
Go get Stuck at Prom®

Owls Duck Tape??

Yes! Owls Duck Tape! Coming out sometime in 2013!

Thank you everyone who voted for me and encouraged me.

YAY! Haven't stopped smiling. Normal postings will resume soon.

A long, exciting week

The photo above is of one of the Superballs I set free in the wild. That's what my family calls it. Occasionally I buy handfuls of them from vending machines, then leave them in odd, unexpected places for other people to find, to play with. I took that photo a couple years ago.

This week has been full of "Superballs". Random good things, surprises and interesting moments. Maybe it hasn't been exciting by a lot of people's standards, my excitement is generally pretty quiet stuff. But it's been good.

The big thing of course, the Duck Tape contest. Still waiting to find out who won, and all week I was pretty obsessed with it, I want to win it so much, but now voting is done, there is nothing more I can do, and feel pretty good about at least making it into the finals. Winning would be a great thing for this little blog, because Duck Tape said they might post a URL to the winner's webpage.

I'm getting a Fiskars Fuse Creativity System! YAY! It will be here tomorrow and it's really too nifty! If you haven't heard of them yet, it's a upper end home crafting die cut system that will emboss, letter press and cut. You can buy an adapter kit to use dies and folders from other systems with it, and it has a very large area so it will work with larger dies like the Big Shot dies. I've been wanting one since they came out, so it's pretty nifty. I've been looking at information about making my own letter press plates using photo polymer plates, and talking to my husband about building a small breakdown portable exposure unit to burn the plates.

Since I've been considering self-publishing a zine full of dandelion recipes, I can do a letter pressed cover for it! It will be a small run at this point, but I'll also do it in e-book format. That's something I plan to start working on seriously as soon as dandelions come up in spring. My son said he would help with it.

Yesterday was my best friend's birthday. It's hard to believe it's been over a year since she passed. I miss her daily. Last year for her birthday, when it was still all very raw, we donated food to our local soup kitchen. This year we did the same thing, checking their website for the wishlist and buying them stuff off of that.
After we dropped that off, we went to a local craft show. I managed mostly to stick to my plan. One new cup from one of my favorite local potters, Hot and Spicy Reindeer Sausage from Indian Valley Meats and a few other little things.
Then we met Dad and William at Peggy's for pie. Peggy's is an Anchorage institution, it's been there since the 40s, and they make the best pie. We had lunch and pie, and watched planes and helicopters landing and taking off from Merrill Field, a small private plane airport.

There were a lot of little moments of happiness and joy this whole week, and the total excitement of the Duck Tape contest. I think they will probably announce the winner tomorrow.

Exciting news

Duck Tape started a MyDesign contest last month, and picked 20 finalists from all the entries to be voted on by Duck Tape fans. The winning design will be made into Duck Tape that will be available for sale!

Because of Sandy, the voting part of the contest was delayed, and I was notified yesterday that my design made the finals. I'm super honored, the other finalists all have fantastic designs, and they would all make fun tapes to use for crafts.

Of course,if my design gets picked, it means publicity for Don't Eat the Paste. It also means I'll probably do several hours of happy dances, and I told my daughter we would go out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants and I'd let her have two desserts. Because it would be a huge, wonderful, amazing thing.

Vote for the design you like best at Duck Tape on Facebook. I voted for my owls of course, because I would really love seeing that on tape. You can vote daily until the voting period is over.

I've been super excited since being told I was a finalist, and sort of nervous, afraid nobody would like my design, but a lot of the comments are so nice! (Super excited= dancing, laughing, telling my family repeatedly "I'm a finalist!")

Oh, the photo above is an old Captain Hammer messenger bag. I used it for about 3 years, and it was falling apart by the time I finally gave it up. Now it's a home for stickers on the outside and I keep my markers in the bag to keep them easy to find.

Today was the first time my son voted in a presidential election. He was very serious and very careful about his vote. I'm so proud of him for the care and consideration he took.

Tapeffiti decorated mini-comp book

Tapeffiti™ is a decorative tape that comes on the cutest mini-dispensers ever made by Fashion Angels. Recently I had the chance to try the Tapeffiti 30 Decorative Tape Roll Set (Fashion Angels link)- the set comes with a wide variety of designs that can be used on all sorts of things. The first thing I wanted to do was a decorated mini comp book. I use mini comp books to write down ideas while out and about.

Actually, the first thing I did after pulling out the supplies was offer The Amazing Turnip Girl her choice of tapes that I'd leave for her. The 30 kinds of tape have all sorts of designs, super kawaii, pretty flowers like I used above, some lacy effects, a mini caution tape, a herringbone, animal prints in bright colors. Just a lot of selection which makes this a good project for tween parties.

You will need:

• Duct tape
• Tapeffiti Decorative Tapes- not only do they have the 30 roll set, but they also have Monster High™ and Barbie™ packs as well
• Scissors- I like non-stick scissors (Amazon affiliate link)
• mini composition books- I got mine from Wal-Mart
• 1/4 inch elastic
• ribbon
• stapler

The nice thing about customizing these little notebooks is you can add in helpful details like an elastic band to keep it closed in your purse and a ribbon bookmark to make it easy to find the page you're on. 

Cut a piece of duct tape the same length as your notebook, and line up the ribbon on the back of the book against right along the spine. Tape over the spine of the notebook and ribbon.

Now you'll cover the whole notebook in duct tape. I've found the best way is to do the outside cover first, cutting length that wrap around to the inside. Burnish it down, then cut 3 lengths the same length of the notebook, fold 1 over each long edge of the cover, then 1 more around the spine. After that, cut shorter lengths to do the inside, covering the tape ends from the outside cover.

After it's covered, wrap the notebook lengthwise with a piece of elastic, pulling it just a little bit tight. Cut it with a half inch overlap, then center that overlap about an inch away from the edge on the back cover, and staple it into place. I like my staple pliers (Amazon) for this because they are heavy duty enough to go through the tape, elastic and cardboard.

Now the fun part! Decorating with the Tapeffiti™ . You can cover the staple if you'd like, I did. Or you could put it on vertically or diagonally. This part is completely up to your imagination. I'm certain that TG will do something very different from what I did. TG loves the tapes too. 

Check out Fashion Angels on Facebook! They are planning to do a giveaway when they hit 5000 fans and they are so close. They have lots of great craft items for kids and you can see a really great dress made using Tapeffiti on there as well.

Fashion Angels provided the Tapefitti™  at no cost for use in a project and for review purposes. No other compensation was given, and the opinions expressed here are my own. 

All Amazon links are affiliate links, if you use them, it will help support this site. The scissors and stapler are the brands and styles I used in making this project.

Duct Tape Comic Book Cuff Bracelet

Also from my old blog.

Super easy to make.

Measure your wrist, add 1.5 inches for the overlap where the Velcro dots are, then add two inches, cut a piece of duct tape that long. Fold over one inch on both ends. Cut a picture from a comic book or magazine or print out something nifty to fit, and put it on the sticky side between the folded over ends.
Put clear packing tape or clear duct tape over that.

Use two sets of Velco sticky dots, and the rough side to the soft side so you have them in matched pairs. Peel of the backing from the rough side and position them on the upside (graphic side) of your bracelet, then pull the backing off the soft side, and wrap the bracelet around to place them on the other side. (perfectly placed to match up now!)

Duct tape is generally about 2 inches wide, and I recommend 3M Scotch tape whenever the colors work because it's a thinner tape than the other major brands so it makes a fabric that molds a lot better. It seems like it's more expensive, but if you work it out at price per foot, it's usually about the same or with coupons or BOGO deals, a lot less expensive.

The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day. Look for participating locations in your area. In Anchorage, that's Bosco's, and they will also have a concert that evening with Marian Call. 

Duct Tape Shield

My son needed a shield to go with his Captain America teeshirt to turn a teeshirt and a pair of jeans into a very casual costume. We planned on getting him one from Hot Topic but they were sold out. So his sister and I talked and decided we could do something with duct tape.

We got rolls of duct tape and went through the boxes we've saved for such things to find ones big enough that we could make it. It turned out the largest base we could make using one box was about 27 inches in diameter using two half circles taped together.

We talked and decided that doing duct tape appliques was probably beyond both our skills. But we are both fair hands with covering things in duct tape, so we planned it out that way. This is what the shield is supposed to look like.

 

So after consideration, we decided the easiest way was in 4 shapes. The large round red base, a ring in white, a round piece covered with blue and the star.

 

So we started cutting up and assembling boxes into the necessary pieces. The ring because of box size limitations had to be done in 4 sections, so we used a pencil and a piece of yarn to mark the initial quarter ring and then used that very carefully to make the other 3. Butted the ends and taped it together.

 

The first part we covered the back first using a roll of black duct tape we had and going across the length, turning, and going across until we had the whole thing covered. Then we flipped it over and did the red the same way turning the ends of the tape over to the back side of the shield.

Then we taped up the ring using short strips and wrapping them around one at a time until the whole thing was covered. We covered the blue circle the same way we did the big red circle. Then taped up the star.

After we got all the pieces covered, we used double sided duct tape to put everything together, but foam tape would have worked as well. We burnished it down tightly.

The straps are strips of doubled duct tape taped securely in place.

The basic technique will work for any shield I think. You could also do cresty type cut outs or hot glue designs then cover the shield with used aluminum foil and burnish it down to make a fancy decorated metal shield.

William was very happy with his shield. I know my son, 18 or not, he will hang it in his room and display it with pride for years. My dad was absolutely impressed with it.